I’ve been reading Joan Didion. I heard some of her writings on a radio programme hosted by Laura Barton about American road trips. So I bought South and West. It’s a small book. Thin. I like that. She writes like that too, using short, terse sentences. But it is her capturing and relaying of speech that most thrills me. And it does. Does she get scared about writing too? Does she still write? Is she still living?
I asked her if she still had the cockerel as I hadn’t heard him for a while. No, she said and then explained how a friend of her daughter’s had wanted one and instead of taking the younger one he’d gone for the older one. We only want it as an ornament, he’d told her. We won’t want him to do anything. The younger one clearly isn’t as vocal. She wasn’t sorry to see the old one go. He was a nasty bugger, she said. I’d never heard her use a swear word before, it sounded odd. She laughed. Apparently he’d started flying at them. I had to use a stick to keep him away, she said. The rabbit no longer troubles them as all the ‘fine’ beans are now gone. She’s eaten them all. There must be a nice fat rabbit out there on that field, I said. Yes, she said, we like to watch them. Nevertheless, she is sorry about the loss of the beans. They were coming lovely, she said.
I worry about the ethics of relaying these snippets of our conversations. But I hope she won’t mind, and will see it as a tribute, a sharing of the warmth I feel for her. Love, actually.
It’s a test of my acceptance skills. It has covered (or dripped over) two levels of windows. It looks revolting. It’s because they’re nesting on the roof, he said. Yes. And they shit in the air and the wind carries it and splat. He called the window cleaner (it is too high for me to get at) but he’s off for the weekend (where I wonder?) and can’t do it till Monday. So be it.
I heard what I thought was cicada as I sat outside and read. Do we get them here or are they a purely Spanish phenomenon?
It began to drizzle as I walked. I don’t know why it irritates me. Is it because I expected it to be dry? I have on my waterproofs so it’s no big deal but it doesn’t half get hot with my hood up. C’est la vie. And then I saw a small fishing boat setting out. How I love that. It’s such a hopeful thing. That tiny craft in that huge expanse of uncertainty. I watched his lights for a few minutes at the end of the Perygyl.
There are night-scented jasmine and wild honeysuckle to delight my nose as I return home. You see.
Strange, sometimes exotic, smells drift into my bedroom through the open window at night. This morning it was the odour of smoky bacon crisps. It wasn’t bacon but an essence of it. Where it was coming from I didn’t know.
Our downstairs neighbour was at his window smoking when I went for my walk. I asked him if he’d managed to return to his quiz nights. He said no, but that he had gone to the pub for a drink. Scholars? I asked. Yes, he said, before going on to tell me that there is a new manager there, the old one having gone a ‘bit mad’ had been found wandering naked on the Prom. Poor man. Why does ‘madness’ always seem to inspire the shedding of clothes?
I finished it after about two years in the making. There is always an anti-climax. An ‘is that it?’ kind of feeling. I need to put it away and think about it. Where next?
Another wet morning. I try to be sanguine when I am out in it. It isn’t personal after all. The wind rattled at my umbrella. I should’ve put it down, and just bore it, but one gets so saturated.
No answer, so the work, for now is suspended.
There is a white light over the sea, might the clouds be clearing?
It rained again but I was more prepared. (My shoes are sodden from yesterday’s downpour so I had to walk in my heavy boots.) And my umbrella held. I walked up through the castle park just in time to see two seagulls made luminous in the sky by the lamplight beneath. The dog roses have taken a battering, the petals lie in pieces on the ground. The scent, like the perfume I used to make as a child (all brown in used jam jars), was still heady in the morning-coming-dark.
I slowed my step to admire the scabiouses in ER’s front garden on Llanbadarn Road when I was momentarily alarmed by a squawk from a frightened baby seagull scurrying out and flapping from behind a wheelie bin.
We sat out yesterday afternoon, though the sun didn’t come. He called out crossword clues while I watched an approaching kite, majestic in its glide and hover. And they used to be so rare.
I read about pockets when he went in. What a glorious book. I was hungry for all it gave me. And I thought as I read and poured over the images, that I almost always have to make facsimiles of things that please or excite me (often out of contrary materials). And that by that process I come to understand and know them. It is hard to rationalise such a procedure. It doesn’t matter why, he says. If it gives you pleasure just do it.
There’s only a thirty per cent chance of rain, he told me last night (we always do a weather report in the evening so I know what to wear for my early morning walk). It had rained when I first woke but it had stopped by the time I left the house. This is nice, I thought as I walked. The wind was quite gusty (what the BBC call moderate) but not unpleasant. I was thankful for the dry and was just putting my hood up against the wind when it started. I was down by the harbour. And it was if someone had just got a huge bucket and emptied it. And kept on doing so. Down and down it came. It went into my shoes, through the side of my hood, saturating my gloves and waterproofs. I wanted to rise above it (and think of those poor loves in Canada with their sweltering temperatures and freak fires) – concentrating on the smells of the sea, the fact that, as yet, I wasn’t actually cold and so on. But I failed. I got cross. Cross with the weather forecasters, with him for being so sanguine (it won’t rain) and my shoes for letting the rain in. I squelched along doing most of my walk and got home sodden. Then there is the stripping off at the front door, the hanging of wet things in the bathroom and the knowledge that drying out my shoes will take days. But. And there is always a but. I did see something that gave me a fillip of joy. It was semi-dark when I first caught sight of him. And I couldn’t quite work out what it was. A four-legged creature, with a rounded back. A rat? No, there was no tail and he was too dum-di-dum for a rodent. He’d come up the path to the side of the bowling green and was crossing the pavement. He must’ve heard me for he stopped to listen. I stood still and realised what it was. A hedgehog. He resumed his trek and headed under a parked car. It did lift me. It was an expected encounter, something beyond, something magical, I think. A quiet, shy being crossing my path.
They promise a better day. We shall see.
I didn’t see him. I just knew that he was there behind the closed door and about to open it. I screamed but couldn’t produce a sound. I tried again and again to call out and woke myself from it.
And now, it is OK. I can breathe.
My skin is thin, you see.
She told me that a rabbit has been getting into her garden and taken all her runner beans. She referred to it as a she. I heard her new grandchild in the background, laughing and then grisling. She is sanguine about the rabbit, though the fate of their beetroot isn’t looking good either. Her voice is lighter, brighter. She sounds happy.
I love it when the sea is flat. I mean there are waves, of a sort, but there is no churning, no agitation, just a gentleness of moving. I didn’t walk for long, having been held up at home with domestic stuff. Who else changes sheets at 2.30 am in the morning? Does anyone? I like to get it done. To clear the decks for proper work.
The flies were back. And there were no new opened buds to cut.
She wants to see a photo. I’ve told her she has to be patient. And then he comes in and says – go one send her one. No. I must hold fast. It is better this way.
I’ve much to do. And the sun is out. Will it stay?